"I s'pose you mun have your way, sir; but Mr. Halifax said, 'Jem, you stop y'ere,'—and y'ere I stop."
He went in, and I heard him bolting the door, with a sullen determination, as if he would have kept guard against it—waiting for John—until doomsday.
I stole along the dark alley into the street. It was very silent—I need not have borrowed Jem's exterior, in order to creep through a throng of maddened rioters. There was no sign of any such, except that under one of the three oil-lamps that lit the night-darkness at Norton Bury lay a few smouldering hanks of hemp, well resined. They, then, had thought of that dreadful engine of destruction—fire. Had my terrors been true? Our house—and perhaps John within it!
On I ran, speeded by a dull murmur, which I fancied I heard; but still there was no one in the street—no one except the Abbey-watchman lounging in his box. I roused him, and asked if all was safe?—where were the rioters?
"What rioters?"
"At Abel Fletcher's mill; they may be at his house now—"
"Ay, I think they be."
"And will not one man in the town help him; no constables—no law?"
"Oh! he's a Quaker; the law don't help Quakers."
That was the truth—the hard, grinding truth—in those days. Liberty, justice, were idle names to Nonconformists of every kind; and all they knew of the glorious constitution of English law was when its iron hand was turned against them.